The Internal Comms Podcast

The episode delivers a solid number of actionable, practitioner-level tips on accessible comms (hashtag capitalisation, heading structures, alt text conventions, closed vs open captions, integrated vs post-production described audio) but is padded with frequent affirmations, repeated general sentiments, and a lightweight quickfire section that adds nothing.

“the hashtag that's the issue... to a screen reader, it reads as dick because it's an acronym. It tries to read it as the full word”

“if you try to fix a website that's already built, it's sort of in a lot of cases, like trying to take out the egg out of an already baked cake”

The accessibility content is genuinely non-obvious for many internal comms practitioners, but it sits squarely in educational/explanatory territory rather than offering contrarian or first-principles thinking; the 'progress over perfection' and 'nothing for us without us' framing are well-worn in the accessibility community.

“integrated described audio... it doesn't feel like it's a special video made for them. Instead, it's a video that is made for everybody”

“a print disability is anybody who engages with content in a quote unquote non typical way”

Both guests are genuine practitioners who have done the work - Matisse holds a rare IAAP certification (first 50 globally) and Lisa has delivered UK government-commissioned accessibility training - but neither operates at organisational scale and both are primarily consultants promoting a newly released book.

“I am certified through the International association of Accessibility Professionals as an accessible Document specialist. I was one of the first 50 in the world to get that designation”

“I've done a lot of work for UK government contracts and, um, clients”

The episode scores well on named examples and concrete scenarios (the DYK hashtag incident with a named colleague, the Susan Boyle PR mishap, WCAG, IAAP, Buzzsprout, Otter AI) but cited data is thin - the NYT consumption statistic is vague, no adoption metrics or business-case numbers are given, and much of the guidance stays at the illustrative rather than evidential level.

“it was October 21st. Uh, 2015, was, um, the day that changed my life and my career”

“It's still considered one of the top five PR mishaps. Uh, wow, social media”

The host occasionally steers toward useful territory (asking about accessibility audits, co-creation, the future of AI) but rarely follows up with pressure or challenge; the conversation is dominated by warm affirmations, and the quickfire section is generic boilerplate that wastes the final stretch of the episode.

“should we be doing proper accessibility audits of our organizations or our audiences so that we can properly understand, or should we make the assumption we should be as broad as possible?”

“Wow. So it's.”